Warsaw is so flat I expect to find an ocean at the end of it. I don’t know if this is the natural topography or the results of the bombs. I’ll have to look it up back at the hotel.
The streets are very, very clean here. Everyone waits for the little green man to appear in the signal before they cross the road. It doesn’t even smell bad, as cities almost always do.
It doesn’t smell bad, now. We are told the ghettos smelled terrible beyond imagination.
Our block has a Subway Sandwiches and a KFC. Everyone walks fast, too fast, and I put on my best glower to scare off the wolves. The teenagers wear Converse and Nike. The face of a girl with a shaved head and a concentration camp uniform stares at me from a bus stop advertisement. I can’t read Polish so I don’t know what the advertisement is for, all I know is that she has the same nose as the young woman coming out of the Zara ahead of me. I don’t think the woman notices.
The Umschlagplatz has a new sidewalk and parking meter. The street car runs freely through. We gather next to a small plaque, so small you’d miss it. But maybe that’s the point.